Naoto Kisaragi's POV:
The driver was under the influence. They were speeding well-above the speed limit, ran a red light, and hit Sachiko in a head-on collision. Rinnosuke had gone home, and the girls were in the midst of tearing apart the pathetic excuse of dinner I'd whipped up when the landline blared and I received the news. For a good period, my senses shut off, and I stood dumbly, mutely, as the individual on the other line conveyed the news.
It's a mistake.
They have the wrong person.
I'm dreaming.
Denial poured out one after another. Unremittingly. Unrelentingly. It'd been a blur; the carefree banter in the house shifting to a deathly quiet; Shiina and Mao's sickly reactions and inquiries. Upon arriving at the hospital, we were denied entry since she was in critical condition. We prayed and prayed. Sleep was the least of our concerns. The hospital was a frantic haze of nurses and physicians travelling back and forth; white noise. A world unattached to the comfort we'd lived in.
"Mom's. . . going to be okay, right?"
I had no words to offer Mao's frail question.
"This is Mom we're talking about." Shiina, on the other hand, had no hesitation. "The same woman who stood up to a bear when we went on a family trip to let us escape, then returned with one of its pieces of fish and a peace-sign. She's been to hell and back so many times. There's no way—no way she wouldn't make it out of something like this."
Mao, burrowed between my arms in an embrace, let out a whimper. Tears overflowed from her eyelids, down her quivering lips.
"I—I didn't even say anything to her when I came home."
When I was younger, I put on a tough front towards those closest to me, including my mother. The morning of her death, she was looking out for what was best for me, wished me goodbye at the front door, and I shrugged her gestures with a scoff. If I'd lingered a few extra seconds, if I'd told her goodbye, just turned around and seen her one last time, I surely wouldn't have regretted it all these years later.
Instead, I shouted at her to leave me alone, and left as brusquely as I did.
I wonder what kind of expression she was making. . .
I wonder if she died, disappointed that I was her son. . .
"When she wakes up, you better apologize," I told Mao, gently stroking her head. "It may be hard to be honest with those you care about, but you have to let them know. With a great big smile, so you don't regret it. Can you do that from today onwards?"
She nodded between sniffles. Tears building in her own eyes, Shiina ducked under my arm and snuggled up to me too. I tried my best to pretend to be all right, be a proper anchor for my little girls. Dragging them closer, I suppressed the tremble of my limbs and steadied my breathing.
I sent numerous prayers to heaven, begging them not to take her, wishing to let us see her one last time. And by noon the next day, like a mere carrot dangling in front of a horse, like the Angel of Death itself had taken pity, that wish alone was granted.
•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•
"Let me out of this!"
"Ma'am, please stop moving around. You still aren't in the clear just yet."
For the first time in several hours, I took a breath. Oxygen flooded my lungs. Bandaged up from head to toe as she was, IV and blood transfusion lines connected to her arm, leg elevated in a cast, and a nurse pinning her down, Sachiko was her sprightly self.
Shiina and Mao dashed in one after another, sobbing indecipherable sentiments as they did.
"Girls!" Sachiko whined. "Tell these worrywarts to send me home. I'm fine!"
The nurse wasn't having it. "You broke six ribs, sustained a traumatic injury to the brain, had major blood loss, fractured an arm and leg—"
"And I'm still alive and kicking, as I should be! I have great luck!"
Boisterously laughing, she brightened the space surrounding her in an instant. My glasses fogged up from crying, and, like always, she noticed straightaway.
"Where's your smile, Naoto?" The bandages held back her hair and the sides of her face, but her smile was grand and heart-melting as ever. "Were you scared for me? Ha ha. Wimp."
I couldn't care how unsightly or wimpy I appeared at that moment.
"Sachi—"
Mao and Shiina beat me to the punch—the first instant the nurse moved aside, they hugged her.
"Mom, I'm so sorry," Mao said.
"Me, too," Shiina added. "I won't complain about your hugs ever again. I'll watch all the movies you want, bloody, nightmarish, gore and all."
She chuckled, but returning the gesture was impossible in her current state. "Infinite hugs when I'm discharged. Enough horror to last until next spring. Sounds good to me. What about you, Naoto? Would you prefer we go out and spend a night entirely to ourselves?"
A suggestive smirk peeled back her lips.
An ear-staining blush warmed my cheeks.
"In front of the. . ."
Mao took her hand. "Mom, I—"
"Enough bawling!" she cut them off. "I bet you girls stayed up all night, running your eyeballs dry. Get some rest at home. We'll catch up all we want when I'm set free."
They had qualms, understandably, but Sachiko's stubbornness was undefeated. Reluctantly, they exited the room alongside the nurse and promised to wait in the waiting room.
"Couldn't you talk to them a bit longer?" I said once we were alone. "You gave them the scare of their lives."
"I didn't raise faint-hearted children," she responded. "Your softness is to blame. We've been together eighteen years, married seventeen, raised them fifteen and thirteen, and your feeble personality has officially rubbed off on them. But we can't baby them forever."
I opened my mouth to retort only to have my words catch in my throat. Her smile crumbled, lips caving downward. Blue eyes, previously springing with animation and vitality, dully traced the ceiling.
"Sachi?"
"They'll be okay if we don't," she muttered to herself. "Someone like me is their mother, after all."
My stomach sank. Folding her fingers in mine, I crouched at her bedside. "You aren't feeling better, are you? This is why you were warned not to overexert yourself. I'll call the nurse—"
"Naoto. Take care of Shiina and Mao, okay?"
"What are you—"
"They said there's a chance I won't make it." Always, always, she never sugar-coated her words. Never fished for worry or sympathy. "A fat one, at that. I'm horrible. I promised them infinite hugs, but, I won't be able to keep it."
What she said, what she was saying, it didn't compute. Wouldn't. The pain she was masquerading, her daintiness, shone through all at once; in her heavy breathing; bloodless complexion. Because she didn't want to worry them, worry us.
My surroundings blurred beyond compare.
Sachiko glanced at me and weakly smiled. "Wimp." She was so frail. "Because you are, I'll give you permission. To date after I'm gone. Remarry, even, if you're feeling frisky enough."
"What are you saying?" Stop. This is a lie.
"I want you to be happy, Naoto."
"Sachi," I begged. "This isn't like you. You'll get better."
"I know," she whispered. "But just in case I don't. And I really do leave you three to take care of yourselves. If I don't tell you outright like this, you seriously will spend the rest of your life in the deepest pits of despair. You'll lead yourself and the girls further and further away from happiness. Be happy in my place. Happy enough to erase their loneliness. Or else, I'll come back to haunt you. Trust me. I'd be an annoying ghost."
It's a lie.
Grinding my teeth, I squeezed her tighter.
"I told you you'd have me forever."
"But—"
"I'll only ever love you," I swore, wretchedly, regardless of her bug-eyed stare. "Never anybody else. Always. I'll love you, Sachi."
I scarcely paid attention to my level of voice. Right now, it was trivial. The sentiments bubbled out one after another.
"Now that you've met me you'll have amazing luck. Not to toot my own horn or anything but everyone who meets me never fails to tell me that."
"I've had the best luck," I said, a tremor of desperation engulfing me. "From the moment we met. I'm the luckiest person on this planet. Because I have you. Because I fell in love with you."
Tears bubbled over her eyelids and streaked her cheeks. The dam broke, the waterworks spilled, until we were puddles themselves.
"Don't make this harder than it already is," she pleaded. "I want you to stay in love with me forever, too. I want to continue growing older together. Have you give me attention. Never tire of me. Watch Shiina and Mao and that snot-nosed Rin grow up. But. . ."
"You will."
"Do it for me," she weeped. "Please love them when I can't."
While those around her received extraordinary luck, she was the sole person who didn't. When it came to her and her alone, her luck was unkind and discriminatory. But she had that wish for happiness, and never forgot to smile. The darkness of her life never bogged her down; she never let it. For years and years and years.
From the moment she entered this world. And right up to the moment she left it.